Unusual Sunday

Today was a long day. It does not happen often that I set up my alarm for 6 a.m. on a Sunday. It started a little stressful as all of a sudden I realized I was running late for the metro in the middle of my tea, which resulted in me running out quickly. As I wanted to lock the door I realized I had left my keys inside and I had locked myself out! Luckily my car and house keys were separate in anticipation of this exact scenario so I could still drive to metro; and again luckily I could ask my brother to bring me my extra key later in the day.

I arrived at the national mall. Most people go there to see the cherry blossoms these days*; but not us. We had science meetings in the National Natural History Museum. The museum was not yet open to the public. It was kind of like A Night at the Museum!** We entered from the back door; We were guided to our meeting place. It was so nice to finally see the faces of people I had either heard about or worked with during the past year; We had worked and collaborated with each other over phone and email, despite time and distance barriers among others. People from Italy, Germany, different parts of the U.S. (California, Arizona, etc.), all came for this meeting at D.C. It was nice to see the mission PI in person. To know that my name and work was familiar to his ears. I was lucky and fortunate to be there among them today.

We had to break into small working groups and go to different rooms several times during the day. That process involved taking the elevator to the main floor, passing through the public visiting the museum, and getting to our conference rooms. The whole experience was so surreal. As I was passing through people, skeletons of dinosaurs, sounds of Africa, dried elephants, kids and parent, just to get to a room where we could hear everything we collectively know about asteroid Vesta to date, I felt like a character in Dan Brown's Lost Symbol***: going about our goal and mission and ignoring everyone and everything that was going on in the museum. I also felt like we were time traveling: seeing skeletons and remnants dating God knows how many thousand years back to the latest and greatest science and technology. Discussions about publication plans were mostly about those that would appear either in Science or Nature! The whole experience was so surreal and dreamy to me. Was I really there? Did I ever imagine such a day as part of such a team at such a place? If all that was not enough, we had lunch in the Old Post Office. As we were having lunch there, I related to the atmosphere of the train station in Hugo!**** I do not know what was it today with me and movies?! Have I been watching too many movies lately, or was I just overwhelmed? Probably both.

Tomorrow is going to be even more surreal; At the end of the day we will get a tour of meteorite collections in that museum. Pieces that hit the Earth from comets and asteroids similar to Vesta. It becomes a full circle.

* They are already disappearing this year due to unusually warm winter and early spring season that we had.

** http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477347/

*** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Symbol

**** http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0970179/